OHPI launches a new campaign "Spotlight on Antisemitism" to collect online antisemitic content

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A major step forward in fighting online hate

Antisemitism, misogyny, anti-Muslim hate, racism against Aboriginal Australians

Dear Supporter,

Many of you have approached us with egregious examples of online hate, which despite your reports, the platform are not removing. Since its launch in December, 398 people have registered to use our free Fight Against Hate reporting tool; over 2,600 reports have been made so far. Users of the platform, including experts, are also helping to verify the reports, improving the system's quality.

Our Fight Against Hate system has also been endorsed by the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism, an international gathering of politicians, NGOs, and Jewish community leaders from around the world working to combating racism against Jews. We are currently running a campaign, "Spotlight on Antisemitism", to gather examples on behalf of the Global Forum. During the campaign the Fight Against Hate System will feature a live count of the number of antisemitic items so far reported, that number currently stands at around 1,500. Amb. Gideon Behar has written a letter asking people around the globe to get involved in this campaign. We hope the number of people involve will continue to rise, and that this campaign can be the first of many tackling a wide range of forms of online hate along with governments, agencies and major NGOs around the world.

We have also been busy on a range of other topics, including significant new work on online misogyny, a number of confidential incidents we have helped resolve, work with the Australian Government on countering violent extremism, securing a community organisations servers after they were compromised by hackers, and a whole lot more. Details on some of this activity is discussed below.

A quick reminder: If you haven't liked us on Facebook yet or followed us on Twitter, please do so. You can keep abreast of our activities in real time through them. If you have been forwarded this e-mail by someone else, you can also join our mailing list here.

Regards,

Dr Andre Oboler
CEO, Online Hate Prevention Institute

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Spotlight on Antisemitism

We're managing an international campaign combating online antisemitism for the GFCA

We are managing an international campaign "Spotlight on Antisemitism" aimed at gathering reports of online antisemitism from the world's three largest social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

This data will be used in an extensive report on how social media is being used to spread antisemitism. The report will be presented at the next Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism to be held in May in Jerusalem. The Global Forum is the most influential international conference on antisemitism, in which politicians, NGOs and academics from around the world congregate to examine the spread of antisemitism and build effective responses.

This year, the Global Forum will focus particularly on how the Internet is being used to propagate antisemitism. So presenting a report at this event is a great opportunity to build pressure on social media companies to build stringent policies with respect to antisemitic content.

You can play an important role by joining the campaign to collect as many examples of antisemitism on the three social media platforms as possible by the end of the month. Already over 1500 unique items of antisemitism have been reported. With your help, we can collect many more, icreasing the impact of the report. You can also help by spreading the word about this campaign to your friends, families and organisations you work with.

Join the campaign

The briefing also highlighted three items of Holocaust denial to report along with instructions on how to do it.

Aboriginal Hate on Facebook

OHPI calls for the deletion of a new racist Facebook against Indigenous Australians

OHPI has published a new briefing calling for the removal of a new anti-Aboriginal Facebook Page "Blackfulla RevoltingLution".

The page is promoting discredited white supremacist theories and ugly stereotypes about Australia's Indigenous communities in the pretence of humour. Our briefing illustrates the page's racist character through images of some of the content from the page. It also guides the readers on how to report the page and its contents to Facebook and to OHPI's online hate reporting tool fightagainsthate.com.

Please report this page and its content.

OTHER STORIES

Brief summary of other stories.

Fighting Online Misogyny on IWD
To mark the International Women's Day on March 8, OHPI published a briefing by the feminist campaigner Caitlin Roper about her experience of misogynistic harassment and cyberbullying on Twitter.

because Jews were the original “other”, at least in Western culture - See more at: http://ohpi.org.au/the-why-of-rising-antisemitism/#sthash.1NIzi3I1.dpuf

Jews were the original “other”, at least in Western culture - See more at: http://ohpi.org.au/the-why-of-rising-antisemitism/#sthash.1NIzi3I1.dpuf

OHPI's support base reaches 12000
To mark OHPI's Facebook support base touching 12000, we published a briefing explaining our work: the kinds of online hate speech we fight and the role of our online hate reporting tool fightagainsthate.com in it.

Countering Extremism
The Attorney-General's department writes, "We are pleased to note the efforts of the Online Hate Institute to combat online hate in social media", and that the Government is "particularly concerned about the online environment... [where] extremist material and messages of hate and violence has the potential to radicalise young Australians."

OHPI's Facebook policies
In a briefing, we explained OHPI's policies with respect to posting content and moderating comments on our Facebook page. It also explained why commentators claiming that one kind of hate needs more attention that others are misguided.

OHPI at RDA@40
On Feb 19 & 20, OHPI participated in a conference in February organised by the Australian Human Rights Commission to mark the 40th anniversary of the passing of the Racial Discriminate Act.

because Jews were the original “other”, at least in Western culture - See more at: http://ohpi.org.au/the-why-of-rising-antisemitism/#sthash.1NIzi3I1.dpuf

Jews were the original “other”, at least in Western culture - See more at: http://ohpi.org.au/the-why-of-rising-antisemitism/#sthash.1NIzi3I1.dpuf

Community Consultation on RDA
OHPI also participated in a community consultation on March 11 organised by the Australian Human Rights Commission on how the Racial Discrimination Act can be better promoted.

MEDIA COVERAGE

March 13, 2015: The website Collective Shout republished a piece from ohpi.org.au.
March 12, 2015: J-Wire published a piece on OHPI's campaign Spotlight on Antisemitism.